


we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet

by drowninglovers



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Intricate Rituals, M/M, Mutual Pining, New Year's Eve, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowninglovers/pseuds/drowninglovers
Summary: If this is to be the last time they interact (and it likely will), Tom wants it to be memorable.
Relationships: Thomas Hartnell/Lt John Irving
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet

**Author's Note:**

> -all notes on hogmanay are taken from the wikipedia page. any errors are my own.  
> -title from _auld lang syne_ originally by robert burns. my favourite versions of the song are by sufjan stevens and evie clair

Really, it's quite simple.

Tom Hartnell was hopelessly in love with Lt. Irving and then he wasn't. Same way he was sick, sicker than he can remember being in his entire life and then he recovered. The love burnt right out of him with the illness. There was a reasonable explanation for it after all: they were dying. Things were hopeless in that way that swings back around to hope. Tragedy brings people together. It isn't unfeasible that fondness would become part of the equation. He doesn't recall its beginning—shortly after the Creature first appeared,  probably; when things took the first turn from inconvenient to doomed—only his annoyance at the audacity of his heart. Didn't it know he had bigger things to worry about?  Tom spent his days sewing bodies into shrouds and still worried that if he looked too long at Irving, everyone would know why.  The same way everyone knew about Bridgens and Peglar from the moment they started walking. That is, of course, if people somehow didn't know before. Nobody was going to get punished for _that_ on their death march. Other things, yes, but not for love.

It couldn't have been love, though. If it was, it would have lingered after Tom got better, it wouldn't have been cured. But not everything endures.

Or so he assumed.  When they squeezed by each other on _Investigator_ 's overflowing decks, when everyone went their separate ways after they docked, he felt nothing but simple camaraderie toward the man.  Admiration for surviving, yes, the vague affection that he feels towards most of them (with some choice exceptions), but nothing deeper. So what was it all for then, the love? Some desperate hope to keep him going? A distraction from their circumstances?

From forty paces away he recognizes both the grave and its visitor. The grave because it's John's and was their father's before him. Another Hartnell family heirloom. The familiar form standing in front of it can only be Irving. Tom knew him at the end of the world and, quite literally, in sickness and health, he can recognize him from across a graveyard. And all Tom can think is _oh dear_. His stomach begins an impressive acrobatics routine he hasn't felt since he was throwing his guts up with Irving ( _goddamn Irving_ ) leaning over him. Irving mopped his brow with a bowl of broth clutched in the other hand like a priest delivering last rites. He never mentioned it afterwards. Only a brief 'you're looking much better, Hartnell' and that was it. Tom figures it's one more thing he can never discuss. The closer he gets to the grave, the more he feels that return to sickness. This feeling is too large for 'I owe this man for taking care of me when I was ill', and too unwieldy for 'it's good to see another survivor'. No, this is anxiety which can only stem from love.

He's still wearing that coat. That's the first thing Tom takes inventory of.  The colour has begun to leech from the wool and he's sure if it isn't patched beyond belief it must be inefficient at keeping the wind out.  Same coat, same scarf, if he didn't have proof of survival, he'd swear he took a wrong turn by accident and ended up in the underworld. After all, this is a graveyard. That's how unchanged his appearance is.  His hair and beard have grown out since Canada—the majority of them were shorn down to their scalps to do away with lice—but besides that, he looks the same as he did the day they got rescued. Worn-out and desperate and lonely, even then.

"Lieutenant Irving," Tom says by way of greeting once he’s close enough.

Irving doesn't turn to look at him. "Mr. Hartnell." Nor does he bother to mask his accent.  It only started to slip out in those perilous last few months when façades began to slip away from them the same way pounds did.  First only on the ends of words, dropping the final consonant or switching it for another, before letting it go all at once. No man cared where his shipmates were from when it seemed as though they would never return. There was a lot they left behind on those ships that couldn't be easily boxed up.

"I came to pay my respects," he says as though that part isn't evident by the landscape. His actions speak for themselves; it's the motivation behind them that's puzzling.  Surely, he wouldn't come all the way down the coast just to visit the grave of a man he barely interacted with in life. Unless

No. Tom isn't going to entertain impossibilities. There's a lot he's willing to believe, facing down death will do that to a man.  But, a vengeful bear-spirit is far more realistic than Irving making a trip to Gillingham—during the holidays nonetheless—to play catch up.  Though,  just because the unreality of the situation is laughable doesn't mean that Tom wishes it weren't.

He tries to be casual with his question. Too probing and Irving will snap shut; too probing and he'll give himself away. "You're a long way from Edinburgh."

"I couldn't go back," it's the most honest thing he's ever heard Irving say. So devastating in its simplicity that it pulls Tom's heart from his chest to lodge in the back of his throat. He can't relate. It couldn't be farther from the way he needed to see his family to apologize for losing John, but he understands. Irving turns just enough to look at him and perhaps it's wishful thinking but for a few moments his eyes linger. "Would you like to get a drink with me?"

They end up at a pub Tom's been going to for years.  One where the owner doesn't know him as an expedition survivor—a distinction he prays people would stop making.  It's like the mark of Cain on his forehead and whenever someone looks too long at him he wonders if perhaps it would have been better to not come home at all than to come home only halfway—but as one of Sarah Hartnell's boys.  A few stares come their way,  mostly at Irving's far-flung accent and worn out greatcoat, but they're easy to ignore.  He's come to accept the stares and whispers are things he must live with until another tragedy eclipses his own.

Irving drums his fingers against the side of his glass.  He downed half its contents with an ardour last seen at Fort Resolution, the first time in years they could confirm nothing was poisoned.

Tom wonders why he's still acting like cold and hunger are his only companions. He comes from money, his family back in Scotland would be overjoyed to have him back. And yet he was wandering around a Gillingham graveyard like a common vagabond.

Almost as if he can read his mind, Irving speaks. "I can't go back to Edinburgh because I can't stand in front of my family and admit I've failed them again. Not like this. But I wrote to them. They know I'm safe."

As Irving drags a spoon through the stew in front of him, more answers spill out (he said he wasn't hungry but relented once Tom ordered eggs.  There's a certain self-consciousness that comes with the hunger they lived with; not wanting to be watched in the act, worrying about rationing). He's been staying with others from the expedition.  Hodgson, most recently, who, apart from some residual skittishness, is returning to his good-natured former self. He felt he owed it to John to pay his respects, and to the others buried all over Kent. Orren and the ships' boys, Reddington and Sullivan. When Tom asks where Irving will be staying in town, he pauses with the spoon halfway to his mouth. His lack of previous is consideration immediately obvious.

"Oh, I suppose I'll stay at an inn. I'll only be here for a few days."

Before he can consider his proposition, the words tumble from his mouth, "nonsense, you can stay with me."

"I wouldn't want to intrude."

"You wouldn't be."

"I couldn't ask that of you."

"My mother would insist on it." Mentioning her seems to do the trick, for something changes in Irving's visage. The tightness of his jaw slips, there is something boyish in the way his shoulders round.

The spoon still clutched in his fingers goes to his mouth as he considers the offer. "Okay then. But I'll be gone by the afternoon of the 1st, I promise that."

Tom wasn't wrong about his mother's hospitality. When he returns home with an old shipmate in tow, Sarah Hartnell greets him like a long-lost son.  She insists it's no trouble for him to stay until the New Year, and Irving is rendered mute and dumbstruck by this kindness for a solid half minute. Betsy is unimpressed with their visitor (which isn't surprising.  Betsy is unimpressed by most things unless they are particularly spectacular, or her own doing), but gradually begins to thaw when he's cajoled into telling stories of his previous endeavours —Australia and Italy—even she isn't immune to hearing adventure tales. Charlie has a firm handshake and slaps him on the back upon their introduction like a boyhood chum.

"Edinburgh," he says, managing to place his accent, "thought you'd want to be there for the New Year. Heard you lot set ships on fire to ring it in."

After that, a silence so vast he can hardly put a name to it (finding only 'dread', only 'terror'. Flesh cooking as fast as it burnt. The screams, the splash of oil over Stanley's head. It is so much more than _just_ silence) takes a seat at the table and watches. He wishes he could say that the burning ships are probably the exact reason why Irving isn't in Edinburgh. He wishes he could say a lot of things.  Irving clears his throat but cannot produce speech; fibre from the hat he's holding is twisted tight around his thumb, everything below that first knuckle is bone-white.

But everything does not come to ruin, yet. Mary Anne saves the day when she notices the ends of Irving's scarf are fraying and offers to mend it. It's the same scarf he began the expedition with, the one that came home with him when so many things didn't. For Tom, it will always be the Dead Room Scarf. It's hard to associate it with anything else.  The memory of a body balanced in his shoulders while one of his superiors—drunk at that, obvious from the pink glow to his cheeks, his unsteady legs sending him skittering over the tilted deck—raving about ghosts is a hard one to shake. The metaphor feels too apt for his life.

During supper, Betsy makes note of a small scar on the side of his mouth. "Frostbite?" she asks, with a chilling amount of confidence.  This isn't new, she's always been the boldest of them from the time when she was a scabby-kneed, sharp-toothed child. But something in her tone is different now. Tom knows how worries age a person, and wonders how old Betsy would be if they came back when expected, as expected.  He wonders when she stopped throwing apples from the tops of trees, whether she’d still be doing that if John had come home.

"From Mt. Etna," he answers. After a few minutes of encouragement, Irving regales them with the story behind the scar. He doesn't have a natural gift for storytelling. Sentences are quick to stop and start. He talks like there is a gun to his head, either to force him to continue or, as an incentive to make it engaging. Details are forgotten and retrieved halfway through the story.  Or, he’ll get so caught up with validating a certain detail which matters little in the long run that he’ll derail one story in favour of another. One gets the impression that he's not used to having people listening to him with no ulterior motives. His stories lead so smooth into one another because they've spent so much time locked up. They've had time to grow into worthy companions.  Maybe he's more concise on paper.

What matters is that the story gets told. Irving relaxes enough that Tom can see the corners of his eyes begin to crinkle.  If he's being honest, he hasn't been paying attention enough to learn how Irving got frostbite from leaning over an active volcano. If he's being honest, he's spent the last 10 minutes entranced by the old scar bisecting his top lip. He never noticed it before.  Nevermind that it's mostly covered by his beard and the only opportunity they had to sit this close together, Tom was half-delirious.

He watches the movement of Irving's mouth; how his lip corners pull back on certain words, the quick glimpse of his tongue pressed against the back of his teeth. As the Mt. Etna story draws to a close, Tom thinks he could paint his mouth from memory. The concept of frostbite does not seem so awful if it means he gets acquainted with that scar.

* * *

John stopped eating on November 17th, 1845. He was dead by January 4th. Tom remembers New Year's Eve with a clarity he wishes he could scrub his memory of. How John stopped being contagious around the time his body started to eat itself.  Dr. Stanley was no longer concerned with the effort it took to keep him out of the sickbay 'l _et the boy fall ill if he wants to be with his brother so_ _badly. _ _They can share a coffin_ ' he said when Mr. Goodsir advised him, for the umpteenth time that less time spent in the sickbay would be better.  If he focuses, he can remember the singing and revelry which crept under the door and the sour tang of liquor that oozed its way into the pores of his skin. Torrington, hours from death, wasted away to the size of a child, in the bed beside him.

By this point, John already smelled like a corpse. The sort of thing happens when your body eats itself to stay alive.  Tom knew the scent would cling to him when he left the sickbay, figured it'd beentraced to his hammock by now. But death had cloaked them both for weeks now. His eyes couldn't focus, and he hardly responded to Tom beyond faint groans, but he was still alive. That was enough. Nobody on the ship was foolish enough to believe that John Hartnell would make a full (or any) recovery. His loss was already accepted as part of the expedition, it was a simple question of when.

And so, as the rest of the crew, red-faced with delight, welcomed 1846 in with a song, Tom held his brother's hand and prayed for time to stop. There wasn’t enough time in the world to say goodbye to John, he’d need years for everything he wanted to say. It wasn’t fair. There were 130 men on the expedition. Why did it have to be John? Of all the men on _Erebus_ , why did it have to be his brother? At least if he had to fall ill, why couldn’t he have shown signs during the medical check and been sent home? Then, Tom would have confirmation that he was safe back in England at least.

For the first four months after John died, Tom didn’t feel much of anything and when he took his hearts' inventory, all he found was anger. It should have been him instead. It should have been both of them. Doesn't the universe know that you aren't supposed to separate brothers? But what does the universe care about the brothers Hartnell? Another set of recycled names amidst a world of millions. People lost brothers every day, why should they be any different? It wouldn't have helped anyone, no matter how much he wished his heart would stop too. His mum would have two sons to mourn with no bodies to account for. And besides, someone had to bring John back in memory if not in the flesh. Someone has to live to tell the story. That's how it always is, isn't it? Wreckage builds recordkeepers.

Things were different on their second New Year on the ice. He joined in the festivities that time, swung an arm around Peglar's shoulder.  Drank his extra grog ration and raised his full-mouthed voice with the others in an attempt to banish the previous year from his mind. 

Even now, he feels guilty for celebrating, for living when John is so far away.  By now, he knows it's irrational, knows grief brought him so close to death he can still taste it when he bites down, but some wounds remain raw even if they don't bleed. If he could put this down somewhere—not to bury,  just to let sit while he carried on—he would. Tom's had enough of burying his brother's things to last a lifetime.

He wants to believe that John isn't angry with him for surviving.  If there is a God—he's still willing to believe in God if God still believes in him—if death isn't mere oblivion, he wants to believe that John is having the time of his life. Assuming the existence of God. Assuming the presence of forgiveness. Assuming that the dead can watch the living, he hopes John can see that he's trying his best. He hopes that the time they had was enough.

There are a lot of things ( _more things in heaven and earth, Horatio_ ) that Tom doesn't pretend to understand: divinity, the universe, the afterlife, the inner workings of his brother’s mind.  Despite this unknowing, he feels somewhere inside of him that John wouldn't resent him for his life. He does not know everything, or even most things, but he knows this.

* * *

Three and a half days they wander aimlessly around town. There's no end goal, Tom isn't trying to give him a concise summary of his childhood in local landmarks. Most of the time they just end up places.  Old shops, the church of his baptism, down to the dockyards so he can tell the story of Nelson's ghost wandering around late at night. His father used to tell them that one when they were younger, it's a tad rusty from disuse. There wasn't much use for it on _Erebus_ or _Terror_.  He doesn't ask what Irving was planning to do if he hadn't been found; whether he would have sought Tom out or  simply moved onto the next town, the next set of graves, and a warm bed in a borrowed home.

Something about it feels off. Time doesn't pass correctly. Rather, Tom feels weightless.  Suspended in amber as he and Irving trace a line through places he's seen a million times over, memories he thought he'd forgotten. Same places, different time, different John. He is at once a dozen times and places and nowhere. At home and a million miles from it, the past forcing its way into the present, boring down onto him. Small rips of the future he can discern if he looks hard enough. As he recounts his past he is also rewriting it, memory transforms when it becomes history. History implies a grave sensibility, a need for remembrance. This is his history, it will always be intertwined with that of the ships. His town will always be touched by the tragedy he brought home. Will people remember his name? John's? Will they forget Irving's because he had nobody to lose?

They don't talk about before, of the graves on Beechey and those horrible long nights.  The only time Irving mentions King William Land it's almost offhand as he struggles to do up the buttons on his coat, cursing hands that still shake from three years of being frozen.

"That place isn't built for living things."

Tom remembers agreeing with Hickey to abduct Lady Silence from her snow house, the way she fought back and screamed, bit Manson's hand as he forced the gag in her mouth.  She must have had a family beyond the father that fell to Sergeant Bryant's rifle, a mother, a community who loved her.  _Did she make her way back to them_ , he wonders, or does she still wander the tundra, a Creature crafted of old magic and teeth never far behind. Entire families survived out in the wilderness when they could not.

"Maybe it isn't built for us." he doesn't say that he questions whether the world they returned to is as well.  Perhaps that's the problem. He's been trying to fit into his old life, squeeze himself back into a space that doesn't quite fit. Roomy enough for Tom and his family, but too narrow for Tom, his family, and everything he brought back.

So trying to fit isn't working. He's got to make a space for himself. Carve his name into a section of the world.  He’s forced his way into the history books by taking part in a Doomed Expedition, by fating himself to always being one half of ‘poor Thomas Hartnell and his dead brother’. He may as well make himself comfortable.

Irving still struggles to tuck the ends of his scarf into his coat. The wind grows turbulent.  Not anywhere near as cold to what they're used to but there's uncomfortable dampness that comes with their proximity to the sea. The cold that will settle in the space between their bones and nest if they aren't careful. And Irving's jacket has gone to hell and back, it's not helping to keep the chill at bay.

Tom steps in the wind's path and, without thinking much of it, knots the ends of his scarf under his collar the way his mother did to him as a child  . The wind howls and bites, creeping up his pantlegs and he knows the sky is threatening freezing rain.  Still, he focuses on doing up the buttons of Irving's coat (gleaming like new, Mary Anne's doing ) until he's armoured against the elements.

"We should head home," he breathes, hands still lingering on the front of his jacket. Irving agrees. He does not consider how he wishes to say that sentence over and over again in a much different context.

* * *

“I never thanked you. For staying with me when I was sick, on _Investigator_ , ” Tom blurts out if only to fill the silence. It's the middle of the night, half-past one by his estimate. The only reason he's up at this hour is that he knew he wasn't the only one awake. Irving sleeps, but does not dream, Tom dreams but never feels rested. They are alike enough in this regard that they do not have to formulate excuses for their insomnia.

The blanket wrapped around his shoulders was John's from childhood, the one Irving has tucked around his feet is even older. Save for the fire crackling in front of them, it's so quiet he swears he can hear the house _breathing_.

Visible even by embers, Irving goes so pale at this statement that Tom imagines his mother's anger when she finds that he’s managed to kill their houseguest.

_Damn_. What if he misspoke?

What if it wasn't Irving at all.  He was so feverish when he woke he knew neither where nor who he was (for a moment when he thought he was back in the _Erebus_ sickbay, thought he was John). It was a miracle his eyes focused long enough to recognize a face at all. Though it would make sense for Irving to be helping him, Christian charity and all, it was probably  Peglar. They look enough alike. Why would Irving be taking care of him? How many words had they exchanged before rescue?

Already, his mind is formulating excuses.  Perhaps he can blame it on the illness. A fever well over 100° will do horrible things to a man's memory. He can say it's a compliment to Irving's character that he assumed he'd help the sick with no thought of reward.

It comes out as a whisper. So faint that it could have been nothing at all. "I didn't think you remembered."

"I wasn't sure at first."

"I was so—" he nearly clamps a hand over his mouth at this, sheer mortification overtaking his face.

Something in Tom's chest lurches. Warmth begins to trace a path outwards from his breastbone, so sudden he mistakes it, for a moment, for fear.

"We," he self-corrects, repeats the word once more, "we were all worried about you."

_You_ , he thinks. _You were worried about me_.

"Didn't suppose you could get sick," Irving continues. He is making rather ambitious eye contact with the ceiling. A slow flush creeps from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. "I mean we were all sick, but some people wore it different. And you were...strong I suppose. You didn't seem sick at all."

That's how it felt to Tom too.  As hale as he could be considering the circumstances, then unconscious on the deck of an unfamiliar ship.  Maybe  it was God's way of paying him back for earlier tragedy by only letting him fall when there was a net to catch him. God, or the universe, or sheer dumb luck.  All he can say for certain is that he woke up shivering, heaving, and hardly himself and Lt. Irving was sitting vigil at his bedside.

There are different kinds of sicknesses. Tom seemed whole only because he wasn't afraid of dying.

"I did most of my dying back on Beechey. I didn't think I could survive that sort of emptiness. At night, I would pray that I wouldn't wake up. I wanted to come home with my brother or not at all." He doesn't know if he'd be confessing this to anyone else, in any other circumstances. It's the calm of the firelight, or Irving slipping up and saying I, the fact that he will be gone in two days' time. If Tom doesn't say something now, he'll never get the chance.

"What changed?"

"I don't know. Guess I didn't want to die anymore. There were other things to worry about."

"You are...an  extraordinarily  strong man," Irving says, "I am better for knowing you, and I am glad you did not die." There's a terrifying lucidity to his words, like his admission that he couldn't go home. Finally, he manages to tear his eyes away from the ceiling to look Tom in the face. He shifts closer.  It’s not enough that an onlooker would notice, but enough that their elbows and hips knock together from the proximity.

Neither of them says a word, nor makes a move. When Tom tears his eyes away, at the creak of a floorboard, he realizes the fire is burnt down to embers. He can still see sparks reflecting in Irving's eyes, his pupils blown all the way out.

* * *

It starts with a jig.  Really  , it starts with Sarah ushering the rest of the family down the street to a party and Betsy grumbling that Tom isn't forced to attend so why is she?  It starts with a house full of memories and Tom trying his hardest not to think about how Irving will be gone by tomorrow night.  Going even farther back, it starts with Tom climbing _Terror_ 's gangplank for the first time in mid-February. That's how this story starts, and if Tom has any say in the matter, this won't be where it ends.

Four days, that's all he said.  And then he'll be off to haunt another town, pay his respects, stay with whoever will have him anywhere but Edinburgh. How long will he continue this? How far must he go before he can forgive himself?

Tom won't lie and say that housing Irving was some yet undiscovered kind of torment where they couldn't so much as exchange eye contact without him feeling like he was going to catch fire.  It wasn't as though Irving crossed their threshold and Tom spent every waking hour (and several sleeping ones) daydreaming about moving to a cottage in the country with him. If anything, it felt…natural. Having someone who understood what he went through was a Godsend.

Despite his hope otherwise, this may be their last meeting.

And if it is to be, for he knows that Irving will leave the Navy if he already hasn't—and what opportunities will they have to meet otherwise, he doesn't imagine they'll exchange letters—he wants to make sure it's memorable. Which is how they end up sharing most of a bottle of cheap wine. It's neither good nor strong but it warms their veins and each exchange of the bottle is an indirect kiss. From there, things progress quite naturally.  Irving gives a very passionate if somewhat, disjointed explanation of why the Scots burn things for Hogmanay ("Vikings  ! It's all about Vikings! Burning ships on my own street! ").  Then, he's reminded of something bizarre Hodgson said over Christmas with his aunts and a small pack of sheepdogs. Bizarre even for Hodgson.  In the process, he does such a pitch-perfect impression of the man that Tom laughs so hard he wheezes and nearly pitches off his chair.  The latter action, which sent him falling against Irving's chest, was unintentional, though the moment he lingered there wasn't. He's got a desperate hope that Irving's hand splayed over his ribcage a breath too long wasn't either.

Irving smiles wide enough to show all his teeth and a few missing spaces when he makes Tom laugh.

And, as someone in love is wont to do, Tom concocts a plan to get him to smile like that again. What they end up doing is a very loose interpretation of the word 'jig'. In truth, it's a rather loose interpretation of dance as a whole. There's quite a lot of stomping and a fair amount of hopping.  But mostly it's laughter and warmth, clutching each other's arms and tripping over their own feet.  When they find they cannot go on anymore or don't wish to wreck the house any further with their merriment, they lean against the window, bending toward the sound of carolers.  They’re making an attempt at _Auld Lang Syne_ , though for now the rendition mainly consists of one caroler (made angry and sanctimonious by drink) correcting the others on the original text of the song. Didn’t they know it was a Robbie Burns poem first? It’s supposed to be sung with the dialect in mind.

This gives Tom a very stupid idea.

“How do you do this in Scotland? I mean, are there any special traditions?” he asks, the picture of innocence.

Irving looks startled but composes himself long enough to explain, “there are  normally  more people . But. Um, well, we, uh. Everyone stands in a circle and joins hands…”

Tom  carefully  threads their fingers together. It feels odd, doing so without the buffer of gloves between them. Almost too intimate. Almost, but not quite. He does not break eye contact as he hooks his thumb over Irving’s. “Like this?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“At the beginning of the last verse, you cross your hands over your breast—”

“Still holding your partner’s?”

“Still holding your partner's. And when the song ends, you all rush to the middle.”

From under their window, the revellers are coordinating themselves so they start at the perfect moment so the tune ends at the first stroke of midnight.  Trouble is that at least half of them are halfway to plastered, and the other half reached that benchmark an hour ago. Arguing and off-tune mumbling, no one quite sure of the words, rather than singing fills their ears.  Too loud, and a bit pitchy, Tom takes up the first verse, hoping the sound carries enough to encourage the carolers. He isn't sure he'd be doing this if he were sober, though he'd doubtlessly be on key. But maybe  this is preferable. He isn't self-conscious about anything.

Across from him, Irving's eyes are very wide, his cheeks and nose are a brilliant pink, and his mouth is open  just  enough so that Tom can imagine fitting his own mouth to the curve of his bottom lip. He's reminded  suddenly  of Carnivale before everything went sour. Irving, three sheets to the wind on stage without a care in the world.  The delicate halo atop his wig, gold-painted wings strapped to his back, and how Tom understood for the first time that holiness is something bigger than beauty. Irving's hand, still bandaged from the shove Manson gave him that night with the dead room, reaching out to hold one of the tassels of his lion's mane. “The mightiest among beasts!" though slurred, his words were earnest.  Irving looked like he wanted to say something more before Hodgson attached himself to his arm and swept him away.  Peglar's suggestion for a costume was a good one; it got Irving to look at him the way he is now: like he's  been forced  to rearrange his life to encompass a desire that  nearly  takes the heart out of him. 

Tom, slightly drunk, moderately lonely, and desperately in love (he can admit that to himself now. _Love, love, love_. Like a prayer or incantation anchoring him to this world), squeezes Irving's hands a little too tight and says "you're really going to make me celebrate Hogmanay by myself?"

He starts the song up again. The partiers have almost managed to organize themselves. When they take up the first verse, there is one crucial addition.

In all, the song has 5 verses. The first, Tom knows by heart, though not in the dialect in which Irving sings it, the one he must have grown up with.  The remaining four he knows  mostly  from celebrations at sea, the way the men on _Terror_ on the dawning of 1847 sang as many verses as they could remember to delay their sleep  . It takes a bit of coaxing, but he pulls the tune out of Irving in a soft, mournful tenor. The whole time, Tom's hands have been growing sweaty against the chapped skin of Irving's palms.  Four verses is a long time, but not quite enough for Tom's wine-dulled mind to  fully  make peace with two unavoidable truths. The first: he wants to kiss John Irving more than anything in the world. The second: that he is going to kiss John Irving before the year is over. That's the spirit he's going to bring into 1849. He outlived the bitter cold, the ice, that Creature.  He fought starvation and sickness and buried his brother and he'll  be damned  if longing is the thing that does him in. He's going to get that kiss.  What follows may be a blackened eye, or, a far more devastating blow for his entire family, but despite the risk and his every instinct telling him that nothing could be worth those consequences, he finds that he doesn't give one good goddamn. 

When they sing the final chorus, Tom remembers the instructions he's been both dreading and anticipating. In a flash, he pulls his right hand with Irving's still attached to it and holds it over his breast.  Below the layers of wool and tissue, his heart is pumping with such ferocity he wonders if he may die like this if he actually will die of yearning and his mother will have to put that in the papers—Sarah Hartnell who lost one son to TB and had another one  safely  returned only for him to die from lovesickness a few months later. Irving can  probably  feel the beat of his pulse, can  probably  hear it too. Tom hopes he does and that he understands what Tom is about to do. His left hand has found a home over Irving's heart.  The moment his palm brushes the wool of Irving’s jumper, there’s a hitch in his heart before it starts beating something fierce.

Singing the last verse, the final chorus, it's like pulling teeth.  They find themselves meandering at the ends of lines, slowing down the tune so that the revellers have wrapped up and are now counting down the seconds. There's only one thing left to do now, to rush in.

Tom slips his hands from Irving's and centres them on his chest. "John," he begins,  faintly  aware that this is the first time he's used his Christian name, "how much have you had to drink?"

There's a feverous determination in Irving's eyes and nary a quiver in his voice when he says: "sober enough to know that I want this, drunk enough to be brave". And then, he rushes forward to kiss Tom within an inch of his life.

Forgotten are the  mostly  empty wine bottle fallen at their feet, the townsfolk counting down those final minute of a nightmarish year, his clammy palms. The world narrows down to every point of contact between the two. There is no strife, no hunger, no brothers left behind on Beechey. Now, there is only Irving's eager mouth and Tom's hands knotted in his shirtfront.  Irving’s mouth is warm, and his arms are steady around Tom’s back, pulling him closer until their hummingbird heartbeats sing together. Tom lets out a sound halfway between a whimper and a sob and feels his legs liquify beneath him. Irving catches him with an arm looped around his waist and presses his back against the wall.

_Lip scar_ , Tom thinks, half-delirious. It is his last coherent thought of the year.

It's several minutes past midnight the next time either of them speaks. The rest of his family will be back soon and they must act as though nothing has changed.

"Do you think 1846 will be any kinder to us?" Tom murmurs from where they're tangled up on the floor, away from the prying eyes outside.

John presses his mouth against the crease in Tom's brow and says, the smile in his voice clear as day: " I think  it already is."

Outside, a soft coating of snow begins to blanket the streets.

**Author's Note:**

> -as always, i'm [@nedlittle](https://nedlittle.tumblr.com) on tumblr and [@kitnotmarlowe](https://twitter.com/kitnotmarlowe) on twitter  
> 


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